Public and private health clubs and exercise and fitness facilities have recently enjoyed increased popularity. Over sixty-three million Americans utilized some type of health and fitness club in 2014, up 2.3% from 2013. Over the last two years, total health club visits exceeded five billion. These health clubs and exercise and fitness facilities have various pieces of exercise equipment. Equipment such as treadmills, stair-stepper machines, elliptical trainers, weight apparatus, and stationary bicycles, are commonly made available to users, as are different configurations of free weights. These types of exercise equipment have at least one thing in common: they all comprise handles which are grasped by the user during exercising.
Exercise equipment and free weights located in facilities to which the public is invited is utilized by numerous individuals and, as a result, so too are the handles on the equipment being used. This presents an obvious, potential sanitary hazard, since the handles, at the very least, accumulate perspiration from the different individuals using the equipment and, at worse, become contaminated with germs and bacteria which could lead to communicable disease.
Most fitness facilities do not have adequate staff to clean each piece of equipment after every use. Instead, they rely on users to wipe down their machines when finished by offering either spray cleaners or wipes. However, the type of cleaning product a facility offers matters less than how it is actually used; both spray cleaners and wipes can only be effective if used correctly.
However, much too often the equipment is not adequately cleaned or not cleaned at all. In any event, the next user has no assurance that the exercise equipment, and particularly the equipment's handles, are free from contamination.